The Wisdom of Grief

 blunt needles prepare their doses of poison. our atoms thoughtlessly colliding.

all our tender lies calcifying. as we fumble to bandage the truth's deeper cuts.

time presses against the glass. an orchestra of discarded strays.

flesh keeps its ledgers. an ugly accumulation of our burgeoning debts.

lust invents its dubious medicines.

for diseases so profoundly rooted that we are nothing without them.

the lurch of wanting turns us inside out.

everything we are exposed.

we voraciously consume every touch.

stubbornly convinced that they are saving us.

even as we take our last breath.